NFPA Journal - November/December 2020 - 17

Dispatches Oddities

HUH?

RECENT HEAD-SCRATCHERS
FROM THE WORLD OF FIRE AND
LIFE SAFETY

GETT Y IMAGES

BUZZ, BUZZ, BUZZ
There's nothing more annoying than a
fly buzzing around inside your house.
You can try smacking it with a magazine, catching it in a sticky trap, or
shooing it out an open window. Or you
can try to blow it up.
In September, an 82-year-old man
was sitting down to dinner in his home
in France when he noticed the arrival
of a pesky fly. According to the New
York Post, that's when the octogenarian grabbed an electric fly swatter-a
racket-shaped device that utilizes an
electrifiable metal mesh to kill small
insects. What the man didn't know at
the time was that there was a gas leak
in his house, and as he pressed the
button to electrify the fly swatter, an
explosion occurred. He sustained only
minor burns to his hand, but the kitchen
and part of the roof of his home were
destroyed. No word on whether the fly
made it out alive.

LIVE DRIVEWAY
A man in the Massachusetts town of
Wellfleet made headlines in September

when he dug up nine live explosives
during a driveway expansion project. "To find one is not so much a
big surprise around here, but to find
nine-that catches your attention,"
Wellfleet Fire Chief Richard Pauley
told local reporters. Bomb technicians
from the United States Navy identified
the devices as "live, highly unstable,
military-grade" explosives dating back
to World War I, according to CBS
Boston. Each explosive was loaded into
a public works dump truck and taken
to a local sand pit, where state police
detonated them.

"HONESTLY AWESOME"
In the not-so-distant future, hikers
who take a tumble in northwest
England's mountainous Lake District
could be rescued by someone who
looks more like Iron Man than a traditional first responder.
After a year of discussion and development between the Great North
Air Ambulance Service (GNAAS) and
Gravity Industries, a first test flight
was carried out in September of a
jet-powered suit that allows paramedics to fly to their patients, BBC News
reported. Experts said the cutting-edge
technology-which features three cannister-shaped jet engines attached to

the back and arms of the suit-wearer-
could transform 30-minute treks to
reach injured people into 90-second
flights.
"There are dozens of patients every
month within the complex but relatively small geographical footprint of
the Lakes," Andy Mawson, director
of operations for GNAAS, told BBC
reporters. "We could see the need.
What we didn't know for sure is how
this would work in practice. Well,
we've seen it now and it is, quite honestly, awesome."

FOWL FIRE
Twenty metric tons of chicken manure
made quite the stink in September
when it caught fire on a farm in
England. Firefighters spent three hours
battling the blaze, according to news
reports. The incident recalls another
farm animal feces-related fire that
occurred in England in March, which
was also duly reported here in the Oddities section. In that incident, copper
inside a pedometer that had been
attached to pigs to prove they were
free-range reacted with the pigs' excrement, sparking a fire that destroyed
four pig pens.
While no cause was listed for the
most recent English dung fire, it could
have been due to a chemical reaction
that can take place in manure, leading
to combustion. After one such fire on
a farm in the small town of Throop,
New York, in 2016, Wired delivered
to readers this memorable, forthright
headline: "Crap's Spontaneously Combusting in Upstate New York."
N F PA . O R G / J O U R N A L * NFPA JOURNAL

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NFPA Journal - November/December 2020

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of NFPA Journal - November/December 2020

Contents
NFPA Journal - November/December 2020 - Cover1
NFPA Journal - November/December 2020 - Cover2
NFPA Journal - November/December 2020 - 1
NFPA Journal - November/December 2020 - 2
NFPA Journal - November/December 2020 - 3
NFPA Journal - November/December 2020 - Contents
NFPA Journal - November/December 2020 - 5
NFPA Journal - November/December 2020 - 6
NFPA Journal - November/December 2020 - 7
NFPA Journal - November/December 2020 - 8
NFPA Journal - November/December 2020 - 9
NFPA Journal - November/December 2020 - 10
NFPA Journal - November/December 2020 - 11
NFPA Journal - November/December 2020 - 12
NFPA Journal - November/December 2020 - 13
NFPA Journal - November/December 2020 - 14
NFPA Journal - November/December 2020 - 15
NFPA Journal - November/December 2020 - 16
NFPA Journal - November/December 2020 - 17
NFPA Journal - November/December 2020 - 18
NFPA Journal - November/December 2020 - 19
NFPA Journal - November/December 2020 - 20
NFPA Journal - November/December 2020 - 21
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NFPA Journal - November/December 2020 - 26
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NFPA Journal - November/December 2020 - 28
NFPA Journal - November/December 2020 - 29
NFPA Journal - November/December 2020 - 30
NFPA Journal - November/December 2020 - 31
NFPA Journal - November/December 2020 - 32
NFPA Journal - November/December 2020 - 33
NFPA Journal - November/December 2020 - 34
NFPA Journal - November/December 2020 - 35
NFPA Journal - November/December 2020 - 36
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NFPA Journal - November/December 2020 - 80
NFPA Journal - November/December 2020 - Cover3
NFPA Journal - November/December 2020 - Cover4
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